Albany Invitational Is A Window To The Future

The Liberty League Championships were a true test, an example of what real cross country racing is all about. While not as torn up as it was during last year's Regional Championships, the St. Lawrence course was definitely not in pristine shape by the time the men's race got started last week. We definitely got to face some great competition, and while not all of us had the races of our lives, there were some bright spots. I set a new personal best despite the tough conditions, and even though as a team, our performance wasn't top-notch, we still held onto 3rd place, which is where we finished last year.

Coming into this weekend, Albany provided us with the opportunity for a major boost in confidence, and I think we definitely seized it. Albany is a course designed to be fast. -- there's a lot of hard surfaces and not a lot of hills. In addition, the presence of Division I teams ensures that the race will go out quickly, and it definitely is the best tune-up for the first mile of Regionals, in terms of getting used to going out fast and in large packs.

One fact of cross country racing is that there can be some physical contact involved, regardless of intent. Albany definitely facilitates some pushing, shoving and trampling just because it requires a fast field of 200 to funnel through a gate within 400 meters of the start. While it's not necessarily fun to get cut off, hit, or stepped on, it was good for us to have it happen, to practice how to deal with the situation.

In terms of results, we saw personal bests pretty much across the board. We had four runners under 27 minutes, and seven more between 27 and 28 minutes. Even with all those times, we still placed 17th out of 24 teams, a testament to the kind of competition that exists across divisions in collegiate cross country in the Northeast. Seeing those times will definitely provide a spark to get us through October Break, as a number of us took a bit of time to train on our own. We'll be coming back together on Wednesday for practice, and then attempting to build on the last two weeks at Saratoga, a race that will provide a window into how we stack up against some of our regional rivals.